: Re: Three Act Structure - How do I include it? I've been writing for four years without knowledge of the three act structure. When I discovered it about a year ago, I therefore had no room for

@Murray831

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I think the key to building a second act is to focus on the function of a second act: To increase the emotional payoff of the ending.

Raise the stakes. This forces the character to keep going, and makes the reader more worried about failure.
Eliminate options. None of the easy options work. None of the merely difficult or painful options work. No, in order to solve the problem, the character must sacrifice something precious. Bring the character to the point of despair. Readers care when characters despair.
Deepen the dilemma. Show why the stakes matter to this character in particular, so that the character cannot walk away from the problem. Show how much the character values the very thing that (in the end) must be sacrificed, so that character struggles desperately to find any other solution. The dilemma makes us care about the character, so that the sacrifice feels more deeply satisfying.

One way to develop a second act: Try/fail cycles. In each cycle:

The character tries some plausible way to solve the problem.
As a result, things get worse.

Each cycle eliminates options, raises the stakes, and deepens the dilemma. This increases the emotional payoff of the third act.

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